The inside of Apple's new instant-on, lightweight 11.6-inch MacBook Air has six separate lithium-polymer battery cells, accounting for most of the device's size and weight.

iFixit on Thursday posted its typically thorough disassembly of the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air. Inside, they found the six battery cells which "dominate" the space inside the thin-and-light machine.

The internal components are slightly different from those found in the 13.3-inch model, a prototype of which was spotted before the device was even revealed on Wednesday. That larger MacBook Air has four separate batteries, which are bigger and provide up to 7 hours of active battery life.

In its teardown, the solutions provider found that the onboard 64GB of flash storage easily disconnects from the logic board, but the part is completely custom, meaning an off-the shelf part cannot be used to replace it.

The unique 64GB of onboard memory is made up of six main chips -- four 16GB flash memory chips and a solid state drive controller from Toshiba, and a Micron OKA17 D9HSJ DDR DRAM cache. The proprietary solid state drive is just 2.45 mm thick and weighs 10 grams, while the previous MacBook Air's hard disk drive was 5.12 mm thick and weighed 45 grams.

The new MacBook Air also uses the same Broadcom Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip found on the current MacBook Pros. However, to fit into the tiny frame of the MacBook Air, it comes in a different form factor.

All of the cooling of the new notebook is accomplished with just one, tiny internal fan. Ribbon cable connection points found inside were also discovered to have epoxy on them that acts as an insulator, perhaps to prevent issues if their protective plastic wears out over time.

Included on the logic board are the MacBook Air's Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4GHz processor, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics, and 2GB of Elpida J1108EFBG RAM. Just as with MacBook Air models, the RAM is soldered to the logic board, making it not upgradable.

In its teardown, the solutions provider found that the onboard 64GB of flash storage easily disconnects from the logic board, but the part is completely custom, meaning an off-the shelf part cannot be used to replace it.

But a future version of the part, using higher capacity memory chips, could be used (by an Apple repair person) to replace it, right?

I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.

I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.

Perhaps this way when one of the cells fails, you can replace only the failed cell.

I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.

I think it's probably a thin issue. Battery packs tend to be flat and it looks like the ones at the front are thinner and the ones in the middle don't reach the edge.

When we look at the machines, we look at how they could build one machine; when they do it, they have to think about how they build millions of them so they have to consider the parts available to them and associated costs.

Not at all, you now have much more surface area to dissipate the heat.

Yep! And in addition, one huge bulky battery is a lot more difficult to place inside such a thin piece of hardware. I wonder if other companies came to similar solutions to this. But probably apple is once more playing a solo game.l

I do, seems like a waste of the space in between. With Apple building their own batteries, they could have built a battery to fit the space and probably gotten another 30 mins out if it. Maybe a heat issue.

I thought that as well. Must be some technical reason they did it this way instead of as one big battery....

I thought that as well. Must be some technical reason they did it this way instead of as one big battery....

I'll venture a guess.

The MBA is tapered down at the front while thicker at the rear. Therefore, you have less available volume at the front than at the rear. If you made a single, large battery, assuming you don't have the ability (or for cost reasons) to make a trapezoidal shaped battery, you break them up into separate cells. The cells closer to the front are thinner but wider. While the ones closer to the middle/back are slightly thicker but narrower.

Just a guess. Maybe ifixit can measure out the overall dimensions and volumes for the cells.

That logic board is intense. The fact that we can now stick a decent gpu, a dual core cpu and 4 gigs of ram on something so tiny that can be cooled with a single fan is absolutely intense. When I think back to 486 days Days of my 1st PC and the see something like MBA is just unbelievable.

I cannot accept this seemingly endless quest to make computers that are too thin to have any reasonable amount of internal storage. You do realize that 64GB of flash costs more than a 2TB hard drive don't you?

If Apple wants me to buy an AppleTV and stream my iTunes library to my television then they're going to have to provide reasonable options for storing all that content that don't involve long chains of external hard drives.

Yes I know they want us to rent and stream everything but that isn't going to happen. As long as there are children in this world parents will need either physical copies of movies or some other local copy so we don't have to pay to watch Tinkerbell or Finding Nemo 10 times a month.

I expect my next new Mac to have at least 2TB of internal storage and significantly more than that in external enclosures for iTunes, Time Machine, drive clones and archived files.

That logic board is intense. The fact that we can now stick a decent gpu, a dual core cpu and 4 gigs of ram on something so tiny that can be cooled with a single fan is absolutely intense. When I think back to 486 days Days of my 1st PC and the see something like MBA is just unbelievable.

I remember the Apple ][+ from my childhood. Back in those days Apple provided you with a schematic diagram of the logic board so you could understand what all the chips were and how they interconnected. Wild stuff.

I cannot accept this seemingly endless quest to make computers that are too thin to have any reasonable amount of internal storage. You do realize that 64GB of flash costs more than a 2TB hard drive don't you?

If Apple wants me to buy an AppleTV and stream my iTunes library to my television then they're going to have to provide reasonable options for storing all that content that don't involve long chains of external hard drives.

Yes I know they want us to rent and stream everything but that isn't going to happen. As long as there are children in this world parents will need either physical copies of movies or some other local copy so we don't have to pay to watch Tinkerbell or Finding Nemo 10 times a month.

I expect my next new Mac to have at least 2TB of internal storage and significantly more than that in external enclosures for iTunes, Time Machine, drive clones and archived files.

I will be upgrading from my 2006 17" MacBook Pro to the 13.3" MacBook Air. Though I'm puzzled why Apple opted to go with USB 2.0 instead of the faster USB 3.0. The latter of which is faster than firewire. I'm also confused why Apple opted to make FaceTime a separate app instead of including it in iChatAV. One app active is better than keeping both active.

I will be upgrading from my 2006 17" MacBook Pro to the 13.3" MacBook Air. Though I'm puzzled why Apple opted to go with USB 2.0 instead of the faster USB 3.0. The latter of which is faster than firewire. I'm also confused why Apple opted to make FaceTime a separate app instead of including it in iChatAV. One app active is better than keeping both active.

USB 3.0 hasn't been finalized yet.

I was confused too at first but thin I realized that by making FaceTime a separate app they made it drop dead simple to configure and start a call. Did you see the demo, 1,2, oh, no 3. There are going to be allot of people that will never or have never used iChat but will use FaceTime. That's my guess anyways.

I was confused too at first but thin I realized that by making FaceTime a separate app they made it drop dead simple to configure and start a call. Did you see the demo, 1,2, oh, no 3. There are going to be allot of people that will never or have never used iChat but will use FaceTime. That's my guess anyways.

I am under the impression that companies can’t just add major new features without accounting for them in the budget. IOW, adding it to iChat is more than a simple bug fix or refinement of the finalized version of Snow Leopard, the only way to get iChat.

Plus, it’s still a Beta, not something that should be pumped to every version of iChat at this moment or include in the Mac OS X 10.6.5 beta.

I imagine that Mac OS X 10.7 will have FaceTime as a part of iChat and be tied to the system itself so you can FaceTime, say, right from Address Book with a click.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

The USB Restore Stick for the MBA is apparently 8GB. Half the size I thought it would be. How did they get all of Mac OS X plus iLife onto 8GB?

I understand that they don’t need all the other Mac drivers for the system specific restores, but that is a small part of the overall size and even the system specific Restore Discs come on 2 DL-DVDs. Did they push some things, like Garageband loops, to a server to be part of a future update after you get the machine?

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"